Wednesday, September 25, 2013

We are already getting 30⁰C (86⁰ F) day. Which is ridiculous for the mountains only a few days into spring.
The warm is predicted to continue for another few days and it is bone dry, so a Total Fire Ban has been declared because of the bushfire risk.
Which seems to always bring the firebugs out!

Monday, September 23, 2013

On Friday I posted about our flash new gas fridge.
I said without much explanation that we couldn't have an electric fridge because we don't have mains power.
Which led Lisa to ask the sensible question of what we do for light?

The fuller picture is you can have electricity away from the mains courtesy of Solar Power, Wind Turbines or conventional fossil fuelled generators.

The catch is the amount of power a fridge uses, because they are on all the time. To have a solar set up that would allow us to run our complete needs including a fridge would cost in excess of $30,000. We just don't have the budget for that (especially with the cost of rebuilding the house).

Hence the gas fridge, it will allow us to ultimately build a solar system that will meet our needs for around $10,000. Once we have that system with a little thought we will be able to run anything we wish. Oz is a sunny place after all! All it will mean is care not to run power hungry items like washing machines for long when we have had a lot of cloudy weather.

Anyway that is down the track...

For the moment we have one small 40 Watt solar panel (pictured on our bed before I put it up)
and a single 100 Amp hour battery to store energy.
The system we are aiming for will have about 1200 Watts and 600 Ah, plus an inverter so we can run 240V items (the mains in Oz run at 240V not the 110V like in America)

Using low energy LED lights and lap top computers that basic system we have already gives us as much light as we need and a couple of hours of computer use a day.

In the mean time we also have a petrol (gasoline) generator to run my powertools for the building. We also use it run things like a washing machine. And a TV and DVD player when we just have to have a break from being hill-billies.
In the cold winter nights in an unlined house it also allowed us to run an electric heater so we didn't freeze to death!
With the wood stove and linings and insulation in place we won't need it next winter.

Saturday, September 21, 2013

This evening Deb and I took advantage
of the lengthening days and spring weather to go for a stroll across
our place and into our neighbours property.

The block next door is a bush block
entirely covered by a mix of regrowth wet sclerophyll forest and
temperate rainforest. The block is owned by family friends who I have
known for ever.

R and M are former hippies who moved up
into the area with a hippie wave in the 1970s. In the late 70s early
80s they set up a small scale timber milling business that initially
specialised in salvaging fallen timber.

As time went by their business expanded
and salvage timber just wasn't providing enough timer to keep them
going.

So they bought the forest block next
door to us to log.

Does that sound like a contradiction in
terms?

A hippie run timber industry?

Well R and M argue that well run
forestry is the most sustainable industry in the world.

I have to admit that I mostly agree
with them.

As you walk along the track into
their private forest you are surrounded by towering Blue-gums at
least 30 metres (100 feet) tall.

To my knowledge this forest has been
worked over by loggers five times since 1920, the last time was by R
and M in the late 1990s.

Despite that, because of the methods
the loggers use there is still plenty of habitat and teeming
wildlife, both flora and fauna.

Yes, areas like this new trail cut in
to get access look pretty stark, but eighteen months after the
loggers stop using this trail in this high rainfall area the forest
will be reclaiming it.

Yet, walking through the area you find
ghosts of what was here a hundred years ago.

This chunk of a tree isn't a stump
but a section cut of the base of a log to make it light enough to tow
away using a bullock team some time before 1920.

I have leant my
walking pole (4 feet long) against it to give a scale. The forest
that was here once must have been spectacular; the like of which we
will not see again, at least not for generations.

Friday, September 20, 2013

First up let's look at the first part of this week's WIIWNot surprisingly these piccies elicited responses that earn 100%

Old Kitty said it was “1) It's the neatest fridge I've ever seen!”It is a fridge 100% (it is neat and tidy because it is brand new)

And Linda G said: “LOL! Do I sense sarcasm in those first two pics? ;) Obviously (way too obviously), it's a fridge.No sarcasm intended :-). It is a fridge! 100%

SO why is Al so excited by a new fridge?Well I may have mentioned we have no mains electricity up here. And given power lines would have to be brought through miles of forest it is far too expensive to ever put on.

So that means no electric fridge.

A problem solved by this, our brand new gas powered fridge. We ordered it just after we moved in (weeks ago now) and it has only just arrived.

In the mean time we have been using an Esky chest topped up with ice every couple of days to keep our food cold.

Inside toilets, hot showers and cool refrigerators are all things we didn't have just a fortnight ago.One of the things you realise moving up to the bush is a lot of the little things in life are in fact BIG things.

Speaking of the bush, it means clear skies and tonight I shot this.Not it isn't some weird sunset, if I cut the camera's shutter speed right back, you can see it is in fact tonight's full moon.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Big News!
We have a functioning bathroom, the plumber has connected the hotwater system to the stove and we have had our first showers!
As to what else has been happening, over the weekend I managed to:
Stuff insulation into the ceiling of the kitchen and bedroom.
Boy is it hard to get it to stay up there! But I don't have time or inclination to take off the roof .
Line the kitchen ceiling
And line and insulate the bedroom ceiling and walls

A lot of the house has yet to be done but instantly we have stopped shivering at night.

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Well what with my late post of WIIW (or WIIT) there was only one guess.

Old Kitty guessed: "Algae! LOL!! A pattern on a rug?"

Well those are great guesses, the rug is closer because it is something on fabric.
Back to that in a moment.

Last weekend (as most weekends) we worked on our cottage.
We were quite productive with me doing much of the work and Deb acting in a support role and as budding Photo-Journalist (I keep my good camera and lenses as far away from things like tile glue as possible).
We finished grouting and sealing the bathroom tiles.

Then I began installing a...
And beside that...
Tap (faucet?) fittings for the shower (still have to order a glass shower screen)
and a hand basin
So by the end of the weekend we had this...
Unfortunately, as you might notice there is still light coming up through the floor waste.
We are now waiting on a plumber to connect up the water and drainage (an obligation under NSW law).
We can't wait because we are currently washing everything including ourselves in water we heat on a gas stove!
And traipsing outside to the old "thunderbox" out the back.
AND once the hot water system is connected we can finally light the wood stove and be a whole lot warmer. The bathroom might be coming together but the rest of the house is still very much a building site.

After all that, I flopped in one of our camp chairs where Deb took this piccie of a very exhausted (and grimy) Al.

Finally the answer to WIIW can be found on my left knee...
It's a stain from the waterproof membrane that went under the tiles.

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Only two guesses for this week's WIIW.
I suppose that is what I get for posting about snakes...

It seems the image was more difficult to guess than I thought.
Put that down to my tricky nature.
Both guesses were kind of right - so both earn points.

Linda G thought: “Why, that is obviously bent...something.
Metal, it looks like to me. Or possibly an old wire you removed from
your house. (IOW, I haven't a clue. *grin*)”

Well it does look bent, and it is definitely metal, bronze in
fact. 50%

While Old Kitty
guessed: “It's a leather strap!”

As I said above it is bronze, but it is a representation of a
leather strap so I guess that earns 70%!

This Amazonian figure is a memorial to the fallen soldiers of
World War One.
She stands in Camperdown in Victoria, and her name is
“Spirit of Empire”, which seems rather anachronistic in 2013 Oz.
Still I guess those who lost so many were looking for some kind of
meaning and Oz in the 1920s was a very different place.

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Well it has been unseasonably warm down this way over the past few weeks.

As proof of that as we were heading out a few days ago we saw our first snake of the season.

And she was a beauty!

Back before winter I snapped a few photos on my phone of a Carpet Python crossing our track.

This Diamond Python (Morelia spilota spilota) was in almost the same place but this time I had my camera.

She was on the track and went into this aggressive pose when I went to move her.
Pythons are non-venomous (they dispatch their prey by constriction) but they have a mouth full of needle sharp teeth. And at about six feet long a bite from her would hurt (a lot). It is mostly bluff though as they usually try to avoid confrontation.

I moved around her looking for nice shots but she kept swivelling around to face me.
And given her posture I wasn't entirely sure she wouldn't bite. The tight "S" curve of her body is basically like a coiled spring ready to strike.
They are called "Diamond Pythons" because of the rosettes that spangle their body.

I think she has moulted recently because although she was dusty from crossing our dry dirt track, her scales glistened beautifully in the light.
Eventually she realised she wasn't going to bluff me and turned tail and glided away.

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Our bathroom continues to progress.
Despite our run to Yamba I have managed to get the tiles on the remaining two walls.

Now the tiles are set I have been down on my knees to begin grouting.
The large hole in the back wall is a space to take a mirror fronted cabinet, it is a small room so I am setting the cabinet into the wall to minimise lost space .